The Smart Home concept continues to gain popularity with more and more people adopting the technology by purchasing devices like the Amazon Echo and Google Home, and pairing them with other smart devices like light bulbs and refrigerators in their homes.

We were so excited when Facebook started allowing gifs to be posted as either comments or pictures. That excitement soon turned to disappointment, as the upload process was rather complicated and rife with errors. This guide explains how you can upload gifs that play automatically and avoid errors like posting static images or link pages instead.

What are gifs anyway?

You probably know what gifs are, if you reached this article via a Google search but we thought it would be good to provide some background information on what they are. GIF or Graphics Interchange Format, is a digital image format like JPG and PNG. The popularity of gifs stems forom the fact that they can support some simple animations.

The way animated gifs work is by holding together multiple images which appear one after another, creating a video effect. There are some limitations when it comes to gifs. For one, they only support 256 colors, so no HD gifs. They also don't support sound, which explains why so many of them come with subs.

Why bother with uploading gifs in Facebook?

You might be wondering why bother with gifs at all, if they're so much harder to upload than a normal picture. Well, the main reason why we think you should share gifs on Facebook is because they help to maintain your audience's interest longer than a picture.

Gifs give you an opportunity to engage with your audience, adding a punchline or a laugh, and capturing that positive emotional response from your audience. If a picture paints a thousand words, then a gif is probably worth a million.

Difficulties when posting a gif on Facebook

If you reached this page via Google search, then you're probably frustrated with your gif posts not displaying correctly on Facebook. We've been there and frankly, a lot of the posts out there don't provide an accurate solution.

First off, let us start by saying that you can't simply upload a gif like you would do an ordinary JPEG or PNG photo. If you were to do so, you'd get a static image instead of an auto-playing gif. What you need to do instead, is upload your gif to an image hosting site or file hosting site and then paste the hosted gif's URL into your "create a post" box.

That sounds simple enough, doesn't it? The problem we faced, however, was that not all image hosting sites were compatible with posting gifs on Facebook. Giphy, Tumblr, Imgur and even Blogspot didn't work too well for us. There were times when the gifs auto-played, but more often than not, it resulted in a static image being posted instead. The only gif hosting site which we found reliable for posting gifs on Facebook was Gfycat.

How to properly post gif to Facebook

Gfycat allows you to upload videos and gifs up to 60 seconds long, which is plenty of time in our opinion. Wait for the upload to complete - it usually takes a few minutes, depending on your Internet connection.

2. Click on "See More Details" and scroll to the bottom of the new page that opens

3. Copy the GIF URL and paste it in Facebook's "Create a Post" box

When you paste the hosted gif's URL in Facebook's box, you will know that you've done it correctly when you see that the fetched preview has a "gif" circle on it, like in the picture below.

4. Delete the gif URL and add in the desired text for the post.

There is no need to keep the URL of the gif once Facebook has fetched the preview successfully.

Final Thoughts

If you've had difficulties posting gifs on Facebook in the past, do give the above steps a go. Now that we've got posting gifs figured out, we're doing a lot more of it and hope to collect stats on the engagement which we will share with you in a bit. Thanks for reading as always!

Amazon coins can be a great way to save a decent amount of money on your apps, games and in-app item purchases. It's becoming increasingly popular and we'll show you how to make the most out of them and what are some things that you need to take note of before you decide to but them.

The number of skills available on the Amazon Alexa voice platform has now surpassed 15,000 as of the 30th of June. That's an amazing 50% increase in just over four month since the 10,000 skills mark was officially announced by Amazon back in February. Even more impressive is that in September 2016, that number stood at only around 3,000.

Just in case you hadn't heard, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and Litecoin, have been on a tear since the start of 2017. From a market capitalization of just under $20 billion at the start of the year, the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies is valued at above $100 billion. That's 5-fold increase in just 6 short months. No wonder there's so much hype about them recently, with just about everybody wanting to get a piece of the action.

Don't you just hate how you lose your 3G/4G signal when you go camping, hiking or anywhere off the grid. While not being able to access the Internet may be just an inconvenience, having no forms of communication poses a very real safety risk as well. The dreaded "No Signal" is the last thing you want to see in an emergency. Thanks to a new gadget from Sonnet Labs, you'll be able to stay connected to the outside world even when you go off the map.

What Can Sonnet Do

The Sonnet, is a device from Toronto-based Sonnet Labs, which will allow smartphone users to use an app to send text messages, voice messages and photos even when there's no network coverage. The device works by using long range radio signals to create a p2p network with other sonnet users who are "nearby". The Sonnet connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth and allows you to use the sonnet app on your phone to communicate with other sonnet users within range, even if you don't have network coverage.

The gadget's range is about a mile within a city due to the radio signals being congested, but that increases to 6 miles as you go further off the grid or up a mountain. Using mesh networking technology, this range is then extended by bouncing messages from one Sonnet device to another until the intended recipient is reached.

What The Sonnet Is Useful For

The Sonnet app comes with in-built maps that you can use even when offline to help with planning your route. One feature that we're not so comfortable with is that users can track their position relative to others on the network in real-time. There could be some privacy issues with this, depending on how it is implemented. Perhaps it would need two-way authorization so that only family and friends can track you. The device also comes with an SOS emergency button that can be pressed to alert other users in case of an emergency.

Sonnet Product Specs

The Sonnet device is both water-resistant and dust-proof. It has a battery life of up to 36 hours and you can use a USB charging wire to share power from your phone's battery.

Sonnet expects the device to ship towards the end of 2017 and will retail for $45. They have also launched a Kickstarter campaign aimed at raising the $17,000 needed to develop this device. So far, they've exceeded their initial goal and have raised almost $45,000.